THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

There is a good deal of hullabaloo about whether the Jewish state will remain, become, or stop being a genuine democracy, but virtually no discussion of the impossibility of it being both a Jewish state and a democracy when half the country's inhabitants are Palestinian Arabs.

Approximately 6.8 million Palestinian Arabs live under the actual if not formally declared rule of the government of Israel. If half a million non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union are taken into account, this means there are more Arabs living in Israel than there are Jews.

So what is at stake is not just whether Israel is or will be a democracy (or can get away with calling itself a democracy even if it is not). What is at stake, really, is whether a regime of Jewish supremacy will be established so that the full weight of the state's laws can be explicitly used to enforce the disenfranchisement and subjugation of half the population.

Indeed, to sustain itself and protect against Jewish-Arab alliances that could end the racist regime it aims to create, the government will need to not only outlaw Arab participation in politics but also ban activity by Jews that might lead to Arab emancipation. That is why, if the Supreme Court of Israel is successfully neutered, the present government will move to outlaw anti-Zionist (i.e., Arab) parties as just another step toward the eventual exclusion of all Palestinians from political life.

To protect against Jewish-Arab alliances that could end the racist regime it aims to create, the government will need to not only outlaw Arab political participation but also ban activity by Jews that might lead to Arab emancipation.

Of course, some Israelis know very well what they are fighting for, however reluctant they may be to say so out loud. Among them are Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (who is also, within the Defense Ministry, in charge of civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria) and the settlers, fundamentalist ideologues, and ultranationalist activists he represents. With one another they are candid about their aims, but occasionally they let the cat out of the bag in public, as Smotrich did with his comment about needing to "erase" the Palestinian town of Hawara.

A slice of the Israeli Jewish left also knows what is really at stake, having come to understand that the rights of secular liberal Jews, and their hope to live in a country they can experience as sane, are increasingly dependent on Arab political mobilization and Arab votes. The intellectual elite among West Bank and Gaza Palestinians also know that, in the long run, political equality is the fundamental question that will determine their future.

But none of these groups will speak the truth. Smotrich and his followers prefer not to contradict their claim to be democrats by talking about their plans for the permanent political enslavement of Israel's Palestinians. Leftists fear that speaking of Arab rights, or including Arabs and Palestinian flags in demonstrations, will damage prospects for a protest movement that currently presents itself as a carnival of blue-and-white patriotic Zionists. And Palestinians who aspire to eventually live in a state that represents all its citizens, whether named Israel or Israel-Palestine, cannot admit to this for fear of retribution from either the Palestinian Authority (committed officially to the now-defunct vision of a separate Palestinian state) or the "resistance"-oriented street, which is intolerant of programs requiring decades of political mobilization.

Most Israelis, however, do not feel the reality of what this struggle is about. On the right, they are focused on specific opportunities the government's judicial "reforms" open for expanding settlements, ending protections for Arab citizens, increasing ultra-Orthodox subsidies, guaranteeing freedom of ultra-Orthodox men from military service, and expanding religious authority over both personal and public life. Accustomed to viewing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as outside their state, even while living within the domain of its power, they view the Arab problem "through the gunsights" (as the Hebrew expression goes) and see the regime they live in, which privileges Jews over non-Jews, as an unchangeable given in their lives.

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